Magic Pot

We read the story Two of Everything in class and learned about The Magic Pot. This Chinese Folktale is a story about a man and a woman who find a magic pot. They discover that the pot doubles whatever is put in it. When the woman drops in her hairpin, to her sruprise, two hairpins come out. When she puts in a purse containing five gold coins, she pulls out two identical purses, each containing five gold coins. The man and woman test a variety of items and we tested a variety of theories in our classroom. Ideas were very creative! 

We then did an activity creating our own story problem with the magic pot, and showed how to solve the problem. Students were doubling quantities and using standard notation (+,-,=) to represent doubling. Very fun!